


Grieving

by ErinPtah



Category: Fake News FPF
Genre: Developing Relationship, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Healing, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-04-29
Updated: 2009-04-29
Packaged: 2018-10-23 18:00:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,407
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10724382
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ErinPtah/pseuds/ErinPtah
Summary: "Stephen, I didn't need you to say anything. I just needed you to be there!""I'm here now! And look how much good it's doing!"A fic where Jon is the broken one, because sometimes I like to switch things up.





	Grieving

**Author's Note:**

> Originally prompted by Kahvi. It should go without saying that it would be horrible if anything like this actually happened. Knock wood.

After a lackluster toss followed by a particularly disastrous taping, Stephen shouts to all within earshot that he is not to be disturbed and locks himself in his office.

Jon picks up on the fourth ring.

"What's _taking_ you so long?" demands Stephen, too angry to bother with such pedestrian notions as _greetings_. "Your substitute is lousy and stupid and never knows to have ice cream waiting when I show up unannounced and doesn't understand _anything_. I know you emotional lefty types need time to grieve, but it's starting to look like you're just taking an excuse to slack off!"

"S-Stephen," stutters Jon, in that way he has when Stephen is making excellent points that he can think of no way to counter, "I'm not taking a break. I quit. Didn't anyone tell you?"

"That's what they keep saying! But they can't _mean_ it. Do you even know how to do anything besides hosting?"

"Doesn't matter. I'm retired."

"Stewart, maybe you get understandably confused about this when you look in the mirror, but you're too young to retire!"

"My kids need me," says Jon sharply. "In fact, they need me right now, because it's bath time. Good night, Stephen."

The call ends.

"Well, maybe I need you too!" yells Stephen at the dead phone. "You selfish idiot, did you ever think of that?"

*

Accustomed as he was to Stephen's unexpected visits back at the office, Jon is still surprised when the man turns up on his doorstep with a basket of muffins.

"What?" he demands. "Can't a man bring another man delicious baked goods in a perfectly normal and not at all apologetic way?"

At least the front room is presentable, though it looks uncomfortably shabby contrasted with Stephen's dry-cleaned pinstripes. The rest of the house is pretty much a hovel ( _how did she do it_ ). Jon himself is definitely still wearing the clothes he slept in.

He brushes away a stuffed rabbit to clear a seat for Stephen before setting the basket on the coffee table, already wincing in anticipation of Stephen's comment: _Wow, you're even more of a slob than usual._

Stephen says...nothing, which is perhaps the only course of action Jon _isn't_ prepared for.

"So why are you here?" he asks at last, passing a banana nut muffin from hand to hand.

An irritated arch of the eyebrows, as if he really ought to know this already. "Since when do I need a reason to visit you?"

"If you don't need a reason, why did it take you so long?"

Again, the other man goes quiet. Jon takes a deliberate bite of his muffin, chewing slowly.

"Well, why do you _think?_ " demands Stephen at last, now overloud. "I upset you, Jon! You think I don't notice? When you're happy, you like being around me just fine, but when you're sad or tired or stressed I do exactly the same things and it just annoys you. I would have said _something_ wrong, I know I would have, and you wouldn't have had the energy to deal with it, and it only would have made things worse!"

Jon's jaw drops. At least he retains the presence of mind to swallow the crumbs first.

"Don't look at me like that. You know it's true."

"Stephen, I didn't need you to say anything. I just needed you to be there!"

"I'm here now! And look how much good it's doing!"

"Well, maybe if you stopped shouting at me—!"

Cutting himself off before his own voice can rise any farther, Jon sets aside the muffin and runs his hands through his too-thin hair.

"I should go."

"Don't."

Stephen stops mid-rise. "Then what do you want me to do?"

"Anything quiet," says Jon, not lifting his head.

The cushion beside him creaks; and then Stephen's arms are wound awkwardly around him.

Jon doesn't know what he's thinking. Never before has Stephen demonstrated himself to be anything but useless as a source of emotional support. But here they are, pressed together, a tangle of limbs awkward but _warm_ , and the loneliness returns in a crushing wave so that all he can do is lean in closer.

Infuriating as the man can be, there's something reassuring in the knowledge that Stephen never changes.

Except now there are lips pressed to the back of his neck, and, oh, _that's_ new.

Jon doesn't realize he's let out a quiet sob until Stephen begins to push away. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't—I'm sorry...."

He tries to say something reassuring, anything, anything to keep Stephen from running away from him again; but he's too choked up to get the words out even if he could think of any, so he just shakes his head and pulls Stephen close. And if Stephen notices the hands crushing his lapels and the damp patch on his shoulder (and how can he not, wearing those suits as he does like a second skin), he doesn't say a word.

Then Stephen's kissing his neck again, hesitant, so Jon clings tighter, trying to let him know that it's okay.

Which it isn't, of course. But it's a small price to pay. And he can't think of any way to turn this down that won't have Stephen fleeing in an outburst of shame and anger that will probably keep him away for good.

"Don't cry, Jon." He's being pressed gently against the back of the sofa, cushions helping to support him as Stephen presses kisses to his jaw, his forehead, the tears rolling down his cheeks. "I'll do anything you want, so please don't cry...."

By the time Jon registers the tiny pounding footsteps, it's too late.

Stephen yelps as he's tackled by eighty pounds of angry six-year-old, his voice lost in the attacker's battle cry: "YOU GET OFFA MY DADDY!"

Jon finally gets the two separated, soothing his son, who tries to plant himself between the two men like he's Jon's last line of defense. "Easy, slugger. It's okay, Stephen's my friend, he's not hurting me. It's okay." He looks up at Stephen. "You all right?"

Stephen puts a hand to his ribs and winces, but straightens quickly when he notices Jon's attention. "Of course I am," he snaps, straightening his glasses and running a hand through his hair (it's been yanked hard enough that strands are coming loose at the touch; he brushes these off on his sleeve). "I think I can handle being assaulted by a kindergartener, Jon."

"I'm in first grade! You shut up!"

"You can't talk to me like—!"

"HEY!" interrupts Jon. "Stephen, you need to go now."

Stephen's cowed and anxious again in an instant, but Jon doesn't have the energy to deal with two (other) needy people right now.

"I'll call you later," he says.

He's trying to sound reassuring. It comes out like an excuse.

*

Stephen is certain that Jon will never want to see him again.

He still half believes it, right up until Jon actually sits down at the table across from him, and he can stop pretending to be paying any attention to the menu.

Talking has never been difficult for Stephen before. He tries a comment about the scandal with the governor, the kind that would normally goad Jon into some sort of a reply. When Jon doesn't tell him how wrong he is, Stephen pries further, which is how he discovers that Jon hasn't heard about it in the first place.

Relieved, Stephen sets about explaining the whole tangled mess, which gives him material for a good five minutes until Jon interrupts: "Can we talk about something else?"

"Jon. You need to _know_ this. It practically undermines the entire—"

"Yeah, yeah—listen, Stephen, I don't _care_. All right?"

"Of course you care!" snaps Stephen. "That's what you _do_. You worry about people, even when there's nothing you can do, even when you have your own problems to deal with. You're too old to turn in your bleeding-heart liberal card now."

Something like a smile flickers at the corners of Jon's mouth, and Stephen's heart leaps.

Then he's all business again. "I do still care about you, you know," he says quietly.

Stephen pokes at his baby back ribs. "Care about you too."

He doesn't have to look up to picture Jon's carefully neutral expression. "How long?"

"Cared about you for years," says Stephen evasively.

"I mean...."

"I never wanted it like this," he adds quickly.

If Jon suspects a shade of truthiness in that, he never mentions it.

*

Jon's spent.

He thinks it's the good kind of spent. He's not quite sure; it's been a while. But it does feel familiar.

"I look good in drag," says Stephen.

The voice startles Jon out of his thoughts. He looks over at the man lying next to him, naked under the sheet, which falls over his body like some kind of classical Greek painting. "Hm?"

"Not as convincing as I used to be, of course," continues Stephen. His arms are wrapped around a pillow. (Are they supposed to be wrapped around Jon in this situation? Should Jon's have been wrapped around him?) "But I still know how to swing the hips. And I could get a nice wig...."

"You know I don't need that, right?" asks Jon, hoping he's on the right track. He seems to have lost his sure hand with Stephen's neuroses. "I mean, if you want to try it...but you don't need to be a woman to make me want you."

"I know you don't want just any woman," says Stephen flatly.

A few heartbeats later, Jon hefts himself up on his elbows. "Stephen. I am _not_ using you to replace her."

Somehow, it's the wrong thing to say. Stephen crawls out from under the sheet and reaches for his clothing. It's all piled conveniently next to the bed: they're too old to leave trails of garments strewn across the house.

"Stephen, talk to me. What's wrong?"

The other man doesn't look up as he buttons his shirt. "You called me her name."

"I didn't—" begins Jon, but now that Stephen has said it, the memory clicks into sharp relief.

He falls back onto the pillow, muttering a curse, as Stephen stalks out.

*

"I hate you," hisses Stephen.

It's one of the few things he can't take out on the show, and of course he doesn't dare say any of this around Jon. So he brings it here.

"It isn't fair!" he continues. "You'd lose a dance-off, or a bake-off, or a metaphor-off, or any contest at all except a lying-still-and-being-quiet-off, and _still_ you get to come in first on the only thing that matters!"

A yellow leaf catches on the edge of the headstone, trembling there for a minute before the wind carries it away.

"And I hate that I can't get away from it," Stephen goes on. "Even when I'm not with Jon. Even when I'm not with anything that _reminds_ me of Jon, there'll be _something_. Tracing paper. Trace Adkins songs. Candy bars with trace amounts of nuts."

How much worse must it be for Jon? Even after selling the apartment and leaving the city, he still runs into these things too. To say nothing of the kids, the boy with his mother's dark eyes and the girl who still wants to know when she's coming back.

"Well, I'm getting away from you now," he snaps. "Watch me."

He turns on his heel and stalks down the gravel path without looking back.

(He'll be forced to admit later that he's kidding himself, but oh, it feels good to pretend.)

*

After checking one last time on the kids (his daughter stayed home from daycare with a bad cough, but she's sleeping soundly now, thank goodness), Jon turns on the television.

By the end of the last commercial break he's just aching for it to be over.

He can't remember what he was expecting to get out of this, anyway. The show is the place Stephen retreats to, not the place he reaches out from....

"...always have a designated driver. Good night."

Jon stops, rewinds, watches it again.

He spends the next hour on the website, playing closing after closing, though he knows before he starts that they'll all be the same.

*

"Most of all, I hate you for _leaving_ him!" shouts Stephen.

His eyes well over, but he can't stop now: he's caught a wave of Truth, and will ride it until one of them breaks.

"He needed you!" he cries, shaking with rage. "Couldn't you see that? He needed you, and you left him, and now he's broken and I can't fix him! You had no right to do that, not to the man I love, you had _no right!_ "

He falls against the headstone, sobbing.

The groundskeepers give him a wide berth. They've seen men grieving over lost wives a thousand times; they know when to leave them be.

*

"Don't be so self-centered, Jon," snaps the voice on the other end of the line. "It's good advice for anyone. Would save a lot of lives. Just because I started saying it right after the accident doesn't mean I was doing it for you."

*

Stephen follows Jon in silence between the rows of graves and bare trees.

He doesn't let on that he knows the way, but then Jon spots the wreath, the one with the white flowers and little American flags, and turns to him in surprise. "Did you...?"

Stephen shrugs, trying to convey the sense that he does this sort of thing all the time. "I sort of yelled at her, so I figured I should bring something."

Jon studies him for a long moment, then nods and returns his gaze to the headstone.

"Hi, honey," he says softly.

Stephen hangs back, not sure he's allowed.

"I'm sorry this took me so long. I should have asked you first." Jon swallows. "You already know Stephen. Well, I'd like to give him a chance. A real one."

 _Please,_ adds Stephen silently. _I'll be very, very good to him, I promise. Just let him be fixed, because I need him not to be broken._

At last Jon takes a step forward, touches his gloved fingertips to his lips, then presses them against the granite. "Thank you," he whispers.

Stephen has never been a big fan of patience, but when Jon doesn't move right away, he figures maybe some things deserve to be waited for.


End file.
